Oh, how our hearts were beating, when at the dawn of day, We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array, With all its priest-led citizens and all its rebel peers And Appenzell’s stout infantry, and Egmont’s Flemish spears. There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land; And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand; And as we looked on them, we thought of Seine’s empurpled flood, And good Coligny’s hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of War, To fight for his own holy name and Henry of Navarre. Then the “burghers of Saint Genevieve” were indeed forced to “Keep watch and ward” for Henry marched upon Paris without which he could not call his crown his own. At his approach the people from the suburbs crowded into the city till it held some 200,000. Henry had no trouble in taking the chief of the outer settlements and in controlling the town’s food supply. The resulting famine drove the Parisians to straits such as they had not known since the days of Sainte Geneviève and were not to know again until the Franco-Prussian War. The usual meat soon gave out and when all the horses and all the mules were eaten, any stray dog or cat was pursued by the populace and when caught, cooked and devoured in the open street. From dead men’s bones was made a sort of pasty bread, and mothers knew the taste of the flesh of their own children whose strength had not availed against the greater force of hunger. Touched by the suffering of the city which he regarded as his own, Henry offered to let the besieged leave the town, but so earnest was the League, so inspiring the preaching of the priests that not more than 3000 took advantage of the opportunity. The League was not at peace with itself, however. Mayenne disposed by death of the Leaguers whose importance threatened his power and there was stirring that feeling in favor of Henry which found voice a little later in the “Satire Ménippée,” the essays which rallied Catholics to the support of their monarch. The papers were written by a canon of the Sainte Chapelle and half a dozen friends in the form of a burlesque report of a meeting of the States General. The following selection gives an idea of the spirit of unrest that was troubling Paris and of the lack of approval of Henry III’s assassination felt by the moderate party.